


i eventually arrived

by tnevmucric



Category: Deltarune (Video Game), Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, implied/referenced panic attack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-01
Updated: 2018-11-01
Packaged: 2019-08-14 05:20:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16486643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tnevmucric/pseuds/tnevmucric
Summary: i have my body and you have yoursbelieve it if you can





	i eventually arrived

_It will speak. Its body will generate._

_God's creatures who cry themselves to sleep stir to cry again_

The mirror doesn't look right when he wakes up the next morning. It's not in the houses disorder that he finds himself unsettled, but the fact that he has already begun to look for a key without checking the door. The kitchen smells overwhelmingly of florists foam and ground cinnamon, and the clocks face mocks him. He leaps, half-heartedly, into a precursor of punishment and grief.

The mirror doesn't look right.

He passes it six times. Once to check if his mom is home, twice to tame out the knots in his hair. Three and onwards he just stares. Nothingness stares back. He thinks he's never seen a soul so distinctly _blackening_ over the stretch of brightly painted walls. It makes him dizzy, like a melody within the middle of the night;

Gone, in an instant.

He's trying to find it.

The key is under the fridge when he finds it an hour later, and the house is still empty. Everything feels... unkempt. Like school bake-sale days where the kitchen would be overflown with assortments of pastries and strange cakes long before normal waking hours.

 _You were destined for me_ , he will think later to his body. Quieter. _My punishment_. But his words don't follow a voice, and for now he's running late. Something in him aches and he has resigned himself to the fact that if he'll ever want to make it to school on time, he'll have to run or stop in at the florists and ask for a lift.

(He would not prefer the latter).

Thinking about the haze of yesterday hurts his head, he realises as he pulls on his regular sweater. There's something he can't reach no matter how hard he tries, something that keeps shifting from view. His fingers tremble under his sleeves and he clenches his body tight- the glow of that world, the ominousness, the overwhelming and progressive feeling of pressure on his throat... it was like a two-hour crucifixion. Like his lungs were collapsing down into his body.

He breathes, just to remind himself he can. He clenches his teeth.

Lancer, Ralsei- _was it all real?_ Or did he fall asleep too late again. He glances at his bed with the spring sticking out of the mattress. He could lay there again if he wanted to. He could sleep the day away.

But it's such a gentle morning.

He walks out into the hall again. The mirror is wide and vertical, and he thinks it might follow him too closely. His nail beds ache and his ribcage feels sore. He wants sleep.

 _Subzero_ , the thought erupts blatantly and he blinks at his reflection. The house is _freezing_.

Without any sense of motion or indication (as if every light in the world had been turned off at once, the sun retiring early for the night) the world around him shifts. It tilts. It stretches yet stays completely stationary.

Blood peels away the wallpaper.

It starts as a trickle and begins to gush; viscous and dark, it begins to flood the hallway and swamp his knees, forcing his legs into an unsteady crouch. It sloshes against his chin and he chokes, vocal chords straining.

It is so _cold_.

It all tastes of metal and dried leaves, his ears popping similarly to when they'd fallen into that world. Under the waves of blood, his fingers squelch in the carpet, desperately seeking something. Anything. It's painful and disgusting and he coughs loudly, convulsing as the blood begins to stream down his throat and cloud his eyes: clumping his eyelashes together. And the smell- the _smell_.

A sharp pain hits his chest and drags outwards. He presses his hand there quickly, feeling the skin slide over his muscle- and slide right off. He gasps without air, he can't even see the mirror anymore; can't spot the front door. It's all so red. Everything is just red. Red. Red.

He wakes in Asriel's bed, sweat-soaked and shaking. He's never heard his heart beat so fast and thinks his own side of the room could be mocking him. Smiling at him. The curtains are drawn but he can see the small glimmer of stars from his hunched up position against Asriel's pillow. There's silence. His mom's snoring. The smell of florists foam, if he concentrates.

He pulls his brother's bedsheets tighter around his knees and tucks his shoulders close to the mattress, eyes wide as the panic eases. _The panic_... His teacher says, in a variance of stutters, that is normal for his age. She gets it too. _It's like a thrumming kind of noise_ , she gesticulates clumsily, _just try to tune it out._

He counts Asriel's glow-in-the-dark stars, pulls out loose thread from his sweater, runs his fingertip over his knuckles and counts the bumps over and over again until he reaches fifty. Time passes, it drags and grows quiet. The birds tweet with the first ray of sun: something of a welcome meeting between friends.

And yet he is too afraid to swing his feet over the bed. To open the curtains and think, _today is a beautiful day._ _Today is a beautiful day._ Today is a beautiful day.

Just once, he digs his nails into his palm. Once is enough.

It doesn't feel like a shove to the floor on old school tiles, but he's right. It's enough. Humming comes from the wall beside him.

"Kris, honey! School!"

He bites his tongue and forces himself out of Asriel's bed, quickly tucking the covers back and tucking them around the mattress easily. He fluffs the pillow, too.

Outside the window, through the blinds, it's another beautiful day.

 


End file.
